Your voice tells your listener a great deal about who you are. It reveals more than you know. It tells them about your background, your passions and especially your tension. Had you ever thought about releasing your voice from it's grip?
Does your voice sound high and tight? Tension has tightened its noose around your throat. Suppressed whisper or a voice that shouts? Tension is limiting your breath control and again, strangling your throat. Stress worms its way into your voice. You pick up anger or fear in a voice that is monotonous - or clipped so that the sound is cut off before the end of sentences.
Your voice reveals where you lack confidence, when you're under prepared and unsure or emotionally vulnerable.
And here's the crucial point - when your listener hears this tension, they tense up too. They can get restless or defensive. They make judgements about your credibility. Their body language closes up - like their minds. They've stopped listening to you.
You've failed to get your message across.
Try out these stress releasing exercises. If you practise them on a regular basis, you will be amazed at the difference in your voice - and the change in how people react to you.
- Your throat's tight? Yawn widely and then immediately swallow. This stretches the muscles in your throat - it massages and releases them.
- A problem with your jaw? Stretch open and then chew as though you had a large wad of bubble gum in your mouth. This is really useful to practise before presentations (in the loo, of course!).
- Your shoulders? Just lift them up to your ears as you breath in. Hold it. Then breath out and drop them at the same time. (Shoulders are often where you carry your burdens - your guilts and responsibilities. Practising this exercise will help you feel like Atlas after Hercules gave him a hand for a bit).
- Slow down and take a breather. Saaaaay 5 minutes in every hour? Please? Time out? Every day?
- Have a good shake-out. Start with your hands. Shake them as though you had just finished the washing-up and were shaking droplets of water from them. Then make it bigger and shake from your elbow. That's good, now from your shoulders. Then whilst still shaking from your shoulders, stand on one foot and shake the other - and keep swapping until you are jigging up and down! When you stop, you'll be feeling tingling - as though your energy is moving throughout your body.
- Close your eyes. Stretch your mouth into a smile. It doesn't matter if it's artificial, it'll still stimulate you to produce endorphins - the feel great, stress-busting hormones. Just keep smiling whilst that smile lights up your heart, lungs and other vital organs. Let it light up your mind. Just as you are smiling externally, so you are smiling internally too. Your whole body. Even your cells are smiling.
Have fun - and keep smiling!
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